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Hi everypony
Throughout the years, I've read several interesting posts such as "How fast was Rainbow Dash when she achieved Sonic Rainboom" or "Comparing scales in MLP universe to our universe". So I thought it would be interesting to do a project on studying how the Equestria solar system would look like. I started this project a year ago but now I finally wrote it in a readable fashion (by which I mean in a way that hopefully makes some sense ). I 'published' this paper here in picture form, but I also attached the original pdf file. Project_MLP.pdf.
I hope you guys enjoy it and please do let me know if something I wrote doesn't seem to make sense or is not clear . Any form of feedback would be amazing and greatly appreciated .
And let me know what are your thoughts on how the Equestria solar system should look like or any other thoughts you have on the role of Science in Equestria in general.
(pictures can be enlarged upon clicking and zooming in in a new window )
(note: This is an updated version of a blog post on the same topic I did a year ago. Now that I looked back, there were a few (huge) mistakes there which I now corrected)
Project_MLP.pdf

In this short entry, I will try to list of the Axioms or fundamental principles that we should follow in order to investigate the scientific laws in Equestria.
Most of the science we encounter have two main branches, Theoretical and Experimental (there is also computational but not sure how we can investigate that in Equestria given computers doesn't really exist there...) .
Since we cant really carry out experiments (as we do not live in Equestria), we can only investigate evidences that are presented in MLP episodes. And our job is try to explain these phenomenons and formulate a complete picture of science in Equestria.
Axioms:
Axiom 1: Anything in the Equestria universe displayed in an episode / movie are considered to be Facts.
Note on Axiom 1: We should not assume all scientific theorems that works in Equestria universe works in Equestria Girls universe. But this does not mean they don't overlap at all given that they can travel from one universe to the other.
Axiom 2: Scientific theorems and laws that are true in our universe is also true in Equestria universe.
Note on Axiom 2: For example, we can assume Newton's laws of motion to be true in Equestria universe as well. Although there can be scientific laws in Equestria that are absent in our universe. So to be more exact, the laws of nature in our universe forms a subset of the laws of nature in the Equestria universe.
This is the least number of axioms I could think of in order for us to proceed. Hopefully we won't need more in the future but we shall see .
Next entry: Lets test things out

(Hello everypony, this is my first blog ever anywhere so here goes nothing . )
What is this blog about:
The world of Equestria is absolutely amazing, from the design of its landscape to the diversity and character of its residents. But I believe there are other beauties as well, the beauty of science in Equestria.
Even though the Science in Equestria is not discussed explicitly in the episodes, there are clues hidden throughout. Moments like Celestia raising the sun or Twilight explaining flight dynamics at the Wonderbolts Academy. I believe if we put our minds together, we can formulate physical theories that are consistent throughout the series and can explain all the phenomenons (including magic). Of course, this would require us to really push the limit of what can be called Scientific. But hey, nothing is impossible in Equestria!
In the upcoming entires I will try to set out some foundations or Axioms such as: Anything that is displayed in an episode/movie we can take as Facts.
Hopefully, from that we can start explaining some of the more obvious phenomenons and see where we can go from there.
I've read a few excellent articles both in mlpforums as well as fimfiction, where the people discuss topics such as whether Rainbow dash can break the sound barrier when she saved Rarity, and discussions on how does gravity work when Celestia raises the sun? They are rather old but the links are below:
Permanent Temporary et al (2012) https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/70177/physics-from-a-non-brony-the-sonic-rainboom-unraveled-reposted-from-another-forum
Phisca et al (2017) Are Celestia and Luna Rising The Sun/Moon?
These are some interesting reads and shows how we can use science to answer some of the questions in Equestria (and in some cases actually do some calculations).
The ultimate goal is quite ambitious, which is an attempt at an all encompassing theory, or a Standard Model of Equestria Science.
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Why:
I became a brony about 2 and a half years ago and what I saw amazed me. There are so many talents everywhere. There are great pony artists creating art pieces that can rival those in the Renaissance. And great animators with videos such as Lullaby for a princess and Children of the night that are just astonishing up to the point I do not believe there is better fanwork in any fandom.
I am not that great of an artist (tried drawing some and though it was definitely fun, not really something I would be proud of posting ). But nonetheless I wish to contribute to the fandom as much as I can (since it helped me in my life I wish to do some contribution in return). Since I couldn't really draw or animate or sing, perhaps I can do something I am kinda-sorta good at, and that is why I thought about investigating the science in Equestria. I've had this thought for two years now and I believe the show have developed to a state where such a task is possible (with help from the community of course). And with Twilight Sparkle being one of my greatest scientific inspiration I see this being the perfect way to honor her.
I discussed this with a friend of mine and he asked me why try to use science to explain something that is otherwise mysterious and beautiful and... magical. I couldn't think of a better reply than the transcript of a conversation between an artist and a scientist:
"I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I’ll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe, although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is, I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts." -Ode to the flower
Of course I am not a great scientist like him, but perhaps, on top of the beauty of Equestria we see in the show, we can discover more beauty hidden within it. And together making the whole of Equestria even more fascinating!
The Blog itself:
Although I personally studies Physics more and would be focusing on it more throughout the entries, Chemistry, Biology and any other sciences are more than welcomed in comments and discussions. Any level of discussion is welcomed but if commenting some really complicated stuff, a brief, simplified explanation accompanying it would be greatly appreciated .
As a pony of science, I believe any comments will contribute constructively and that there is no such thing as "wrong". And since we are delving into unknown realms of science, any theory, which may otherwise seem crazy in the world we live in, is perfectly legitimate and worth discussing.
For example:
Theory: In the episode The Cutie-Remark, Starlight Glimmer didn't actually use magic to lift herself up, but instead, she pushed the entirety of Equestria slightly further away , and the glow around her is just for cosmetic effect . If Celestia and Luna can raise celestial objects why can't Starlight .
Perhaps we will discover something truly interesting, something that really ties everything together. Perhaps the final theorem requires a significant contribution from an unknown source of Muffin energy. But I do know that whatever the outcome, this is gonna be an interesting and awesome experience .

So, I have been wanting to talk about this for a while.
Recently, a new type of propulsion was found which was very interesting.
It, well, broke the law of conservation.
It created thrust via energy, without using a propellant.
The practical uses for this are amazing!
In space, it is more of a matter of how far you can go, not how fast.
This would allow use to go extremely far in space and would re-ignite the space age.
This post is mainly to talk about this in any way.
Feel free to give input on any limitations or technicalities.
RE!!!! - It is important you read up on the Cannae drive, or else it will be hard to understand what I am really talking about.

<Twilight Sparkle> Good evening, everypony! I'm Twilight Sparkle, and I'm going to clear up some confusion on what Celestia and Luna do to "Raise" the Sun and the Moon, based off of what I know from my studies. First off, I've seen some crazy ideas about Celestia and Luna running some big conspiracy... (Ha ha. Verrrrry funny... ) Well, Terra (Not Earth. That's your planet) does spin on it's axis to make day and night. Celestia and Luna don't literally spin the Sun and the Moon around Terra, that would take ridiculous amounts of power! But they do keep the sun and moon rising every day. It doesn't make much sense at the surface... But, allow me to explain a few things. Tidal Braking: First, a moon's gravity causes a tidal bulge in a planet's oceans, and a tiny bit in the land, too. But because the planet spins, that tidal bulge is moved away from the moon, but the moon pulls back on that tidal bulge with it's gravity. So this happens: This is what happens with your Earth and Moon. But our Moon is a little different... It orbits in the opposite direction as Terra spins. See, your moon is in a prograde orbit, mine is in a retrograde orbit. Uhm. I need to explain orbits, don't I? An orbit is when a body falls towards another, but it's going so fast sideways, it misses, but as it flies away, it's pulled back, and it misses again. Your moon is pulled forward, as it goes faster it misses your Earth more and more, so it goes farther away. Our moon is pulled backward, so it's slowed down, and it gets closer to our planet. Or it would, if it wasn't for Princess Luna. Our moon is also in a highly elliptical orbit Normally it's so far out that Tidal Braking doesn't do much. But periodically it swings in close, and when it does, Princess Luna gives it a little boost. If Princess Luna didn't push on it, then in just a few thousand years, it would break apart, and later after that, come crashing down on Terra! The Moon also slows Terra's spin just a little bit every year - just enough to make the day a little less than a second longer. Not much, I know, and honestly it wouldn't make much of a difference if Celestia didn't speed it up again... But this isn't how Celestia "raises the Sun". This is just how Luna keeps the Moon in orbit. And so there you have it, Luna "raises the Moon" we say, by keeping it from falling out of the sky! Which would end all life in the world... How Celestia "raises the sun" is quiet different... Here's what your inner star system looks like: Highlighted in red is Jupiter's orbit. It doesn't get very close to Earth... Now, uhh, this isn't to scale, but it shows how the gas giant planet in our solar system is in an elliptical orbit: (Uhm. It's not very good but you get the idea... ) Remember how the tides on your world pull your moon along, causing it to drift out slowly? Zeus, the gas giant here, pulls Terra along, or pulls it back, depending on where the two planets are in their orbit. But no matter what, left by itself, in just a few dozen years, our world would either crash into the sun, be launched into a craaazy orbit that we couldn't survive, or launched into eternal night by Zeus' gravity, because it swings in so much closer to Terra, than Jupiter does to Earth. It's important to note, that it wouldn't happen instantly. Each time Zeus swings by, it would change Terra's orbit only a little bit, and each time it swings by again, it would change it more and more, until finally either launching Terra into the sun, into a stable, but unsurvivable orbit (like really close to the sun), or into interstellar space and eternal night. Every year, at the Summer Sun Celebration, Celestia has a power surge. That's what I had when I earned my cutie mark: Except, unlike me as a filly, she can control it, and she uses her immense power to give Terra a little push back into it's normal orbit. So because of her, the sun rises and sets every day. Without her, in only a few decades the sun would either become a tiny star, and the world would fall into eternal night, or the sun wouldn't set, and would burn the whole world. And that's how Celestia "raises the sun". And so there you have it! The Truth! See, a little filly wouldn't be able to understand all that. Even lots of grown-up stallions and mares don't get it, so, often it's just simplified to: "They raise the sun and the moon". Any questions? [image credits: hot coco / Sarcastic Very Funny / Only One Second / bad drawing / The Truth / Any Questions?]

Apologies for the missing equations, I am trying to figure out how to post the actual document itself.
My Little Planet: Entropy is Tragic
Volume One:
The Celestial Mechanics of Equestria
Introduction
I was first introduced to the pony show by a couple of friends of mine who had three little boys and a girl; the whole family loved the show. Now, this was early 2013 so I am a bit of a latecomer to the… um, herd. My own daughter loved the show (and books, and toys), and I shamelessly used her as an excuse to watch it as well. At first, I resisted participating in the fandom, but now that I’ve written an Equestrian orbital physics paper, I guess there’s no turning back.
I will start off this (very informal, plain-language) paper by briefly addressing a glaring issue from the show that caused me great mental distress, then explore the original pre-magic state of the Equestrian planetary arrangement, and wrap up by describing the magical process that changed everything and made life on our characters’ home planet possible. But first, a few side notes.
Perspective and Giants’ Shoulders
Science is not the only thing which fascinates me, about the show or in general. But there is a sprawling megapolis of pony fandom out there already analyzing every last drop out of this show in terms of characterization, narrative, world-building and theming. There may come a day when I can scrape together enough original thought on those subjects to add something worthwhile to the ponysphere, but for now this is where I think I can best contribute. I do really enjoy story-crafting, however, and I haven’t been this into a story since The Lion King.
I have read exactly one other work on the physics of the ponyverse, so it gets cited right up front. Check out “How Celestia and Luna "Raise" the Sun and Moon” by Comet Tail on the MLPForum[1]. Comet Tail and I approach the idea of Equestrian orbital mechanics from two different directions, I focus on tidal locking and Comet Tail on retrograde and erratic orbits, a concept I really enjoyed.
Last side note: I don’t consider any of this to be head canon. I think there is a difference between the extrapolation of concepts which the canon story directly implies—and even the analysis of those implications—versus real head canon, which implies the introduction of at least some new material into the story, characters, or world. Now don’t get me wrong, I likes me some head canons. I’m just going to limit the content of this paper to those things I consider direct extrapolation from the show’s story material, and straightforward analysis of that, and save the head canon for another edition.
The Curious Case of the Backward Moon
For all my enjoyment of the story, characters and world of Equestria, and even the scientific and philosophical implications of the world, I probably would never have committed any serious effort to exploring the subject of this paper if not for one blatant violation of sensible orbital mechanics which drove me crazy. And drove me to research.
From the first moment I heard that Celestia raises and lowers the sun and Luna the moon, what my brain heard was that Celestia rotates the planet and Luna revolves the moon. Not everyone made this assumption and there are plenty of geocentric model fans out there in the ponysphere, but that is what happened in my head. This assumption stood unchallenged until the ending of the season four two-part premier, where during the Summer Sun Celebration, Princess Luna lowers the moon for all to see, and then Princess Celestia raises the sun in the same part of the sky. It was as if the moon and sun had simply swapped places with each other, with no explanation. This happens a few other times in the show, but always as a cartoony effect easily dismissed as just a fun way to move the story (also, because Discord). But in S04 E02 it is a conscious act draped in a formal ceremony. So, the sun and the moon move across the sky in opposite directions? What does that even mean? After some thought, I decided that this was either the single best geocentric argument in the whole show, or a special event that isn’t representative of a normal day in Equestria.
Most of the time, a planet and moon both revolve and rotate in the same direction as the rotation of the star around which they orbit, all either clockwise or counterclockwise depending on if this is being viewed from the system’s ‘north’ or ‘south’. This is called prograde motion; when a body rotates or orbits in the opposite direction it is called retrograde motion. While retrograde orbit moons are present even in our own solar system, this phenomenon would not begin to explain a moon that appears to travel in the opposite direction across the sky as does the parent star from the viewpoint of the planet’s surface. This called apparent retrograde, and it is very different.
Regardless of direction, a spinning body tends to rotate significantly faster than anything orbiting it revolves. Take our own planet and moon for example. Earth ‘spins’ or rotates in exactly one day (that is the definition of a day, after all). The moon orbits Earth in about 29.5 of these days, so either way it revolves, prograde or retrograde, it will still appear to travel east-to-west across the sky, because that’s how everything that slow appears to move due to planetary rotation. So what would have to be going on for a west-to-east moving… anything?
Anything orbiting retrograde in respect to the direction of rotation of the orbited body will always appear to travel east-to-west, and anything orbiting at all at a lower angular velocity (fewer degrees per unit of time) will also appear to travel east-to-west. Only something orbiting in the prograde direction with a greater angular velocity than the rotation of the orbited body will appear to travel west-to-east. Around Earth, only artificial satellites do this. One simple reason for this is escape velocity. The further away you get from a gravity source, the less linear velocity (rate of motion through space) is required to escape its gravity well. A prograde orbiting body at geosynchronous-plus angular velocity at a distance (orbital radius) typical of moons would simply fly away into space. Or, more likely, into the nearest star.
Here’s an example. The equation for escape velocity (which is a misnomer, it should just be ‘escape speed’, because any direction that doesn’t cause a collision will result in escape) is:
Where G is the Universal Gravitational Constant of 6.67 x 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2
M is the mass of the body being escaped in kilograms and
r is the radius, or distance separating the two, measured center-to-center in meters.
The average distance from the center of Earth to the moon is 384,399 km. At this radius, the moon’s orbit traces an ellipse 2.415250 x 109 m in circumference (2πr), or about 1.5 million miles. At exactly geosynchronous orbit, or an angular velocity of 15° per hour (360° per 24 hours), this works out to be a tangential (linear) velocity of 27,954 m/s ((2.348949 x 109 meters traversed) / (86,400 seconds in one day)), which is over 62,000 mph. The escape velocity at that same radius from Earth, a mass of 5.97219 x 1024 kg, is 1,439 m/s, or about 3,200 mph. So just to maintain position in the sky, the moon would have to exceed its planetary escape velocity by over 19 times. To actually move from west to east, it would need to go faster still. While the home planet and moon of Equestria do not need to be exact copies of Earth and its moon for the story world to work, the magnitude of impossibility involved here leads me to the conclusion that the show writers never intended to imply that Luna (or Celestia, for the millennium prior to episode 1) causes the moon to cross the sky in a west-to-east direction, even with telekinetic magic. Yet this is exactly what seems to occur in the season 4 premier, part two.
My conclusion is that due to the chaos unleashed by the Plunder Seed vines’ entrapment of Celestia and Luna and their attack on the Tree of Harmony, the planet and moon of Equestria were left in very unusual positions relative to each other and their star. After all, directly after Celestia and Luna’s abduction, both the sun and moon were left hanging together in the sky, causing panic among the populace, and justifiably so. In this scenario Luna simply backed the moon down from its crazy position towards something more normal, followed by Celestia’s moving the planet back to its regularly scheduled rotation. Even this scenario involves Luna temporarily revolving the moon prograde at an insane velocity without shooting it across space like a severed tether ball, but temporary is better than routine. Either this, or the ponyverse really is geocentric.
Also, the writers probably just didn’t care, and my daughter wasn’t bothered in the slightest. And then I gave Hasbro some money for a toy for her, so I guess they win.
Formless and Void
The show’s world building has on more than one occasion implied that without magic, life on Equestria[2] would be difficult or completely impossible. I’ve already mentioned how extremely powerful magic is required to properly rotate the planet and revolve the moon. Both of these things are crucial for planetary life to thrive. The mortal and even non-magical residents of Equestria also seem to have a part to play, as evidenced by such episodes as Winter Wrap-up, Hearth’s Warming Eve and Hurricane Fluttershy. Magic or else considerable effort is necessary or at least really helpful in seasonal procession, cloud creation, and even animal migration and hibernation. To describe what Equestria might have been like prior to the influence of magic, I need to explain two concepts: entropy and tidal locking.
Entropy is essentially disorder, with a certain sense of inevitability. When a system is highly organized and complex, it is said to have very low entropy. A brass watch is complex and organized, so it has low entropy, while that same amount of brass melted and re-solidified as a nugget has higher entropy, because it is simple and disorganized. The second law of thermodynamics teaches us that the overall entropy of a system always increases when left to spontaneous (naturally occurring) forces. By investing organized effort, a system can undergo a local and/or temporary decrease in entropy (increase in order), but only at the cost of enough expended useful energy that the overall effect of a larger system is an increase in entropy.
The same holds true at the scale of a planet or star system; entropy increases over time. Rotations slow down, satellites either escape or fall into their planets or stars, and ultimately, the star itself dies in one of a number of ways. Of course, the law of entropy does not take into account magic, but more on that in a moment.
The second concept, tidal locking is a result of tidal bulging and braking, the subject of some discussion in the piece by Comet Tail which I referenced earlier. As a moon rotates and revolves it tends to flatten a bit due to the gravity of its planet (provided its planes of rotation and revolution are sufficiently aligned). Like any other macroscopic physical object, moons do not have uniform density, so different longitudinal cross-sections will present more or less mass than its average density would present, so this flattening is likewise not uniform. The cross-section that is flattened the most is referred to as the major axis, or simply the ‘bulge’.
Once a tidal bulge emerges, it begins to alter the angular velocity of the rotating moon. As the rotation swings the major axis closer and closer into alignment with the planet’s gravitational pull, the angular velocity increases slightly, in a way falling into place. As the inertia of the moon’s rotation then begins to pull the major axis out of alignment, the angular velocity decreases, now fighting gravitational drag. This effect is referred to as ‘tidal braking’.
The cumulative effect of repeated tidal braking is that the moon favors its major axis more and more, which in turn increases the severity of the bulge more and more. Eventually, the planet’s pull on the major axis is actually stronger than the force of rotational inertia, and the moon slips into a rotation period equal to its revolution period, thereby ‘tidally locking’ onto its planet. In this arrangement the same hemisphere of the moon is permanently facing the planet as in the case of our own moon.
Before a moon has tidally locked to its planet (or a planet to its star), it is possible to roughly[3] approximate the time until it does so with the formula:
Where w is the rotation rate (in radians per second) of the satellite
a is the average of the perigee and apogee of the satellite’s orbit (in meters)
I is the satellite’s moment of inertia (in square meter kilograms), which can be estimated as (0.4)(ms)(R2)
Q is the dissipation function of the satellite (no units), which can be estimated as 100
G is the Universal Gravitational Constant
mp is the mass of the orbited body (in kilograms)
k2 is the tidal Love number of the satellite (no units), which can be estimated as much less than 1 (typically around 0.1 for a mostly solid satellite)
R is the average radius of the satellite (in meters) and
ms (from the description of I) is the mass of the satellite (in kilograms).
Examples of tidal locking are all over our solar system. Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune all have moons tidally locked to them, and Pluto and its satellite Charon are tidally locked to each other.
What does this have to do with Equestria? Well, hopefully it’s clear that these two concepts are related. Tidal bulging, braking and locking are all examples of the unstoppable march of entropy on a lunar and planetary scale. As time goes on, orbital mechanics slip from complex arrangements into straightforward ones, which are sadly ineffective at supporting life. A tidally locked moon is not unusual, but an otherwise M-class planet tidally locked to its star would be completely uninhabitable, a blistering super-desert on the sun-ward hemisphere and frozen perpetual night on the other.
This is the cataclysm that Celestia and Luna guard their subjects from, absolute extinction across the entire planet.
Let There be Magic
There isn’t too much detail I can offer as to exactly how the alicorns would have gone about decreasing entropy and resetting the required rotations and revolutions without getting into head canon territory, which I pledged not to do in this volume. But here’s what I have:
According to what I perceive the story has told us about its world, this was the original, no-magic state of the Equestrian solar system. A planet locked onto its star, unable to rotate beyond its revolution around the star, unable to support life. A moon not only locked onto its planet Earth-style, but also tidally ‘pinned’ in place between the planet and the star, its revolution in sync with the planet’s revolution. This moon would appear to hover directly above the planet’s surface at exactly the sun-ward pole, casting an unmoving solar eclipse shadow on the surface of the planet’s desert side, creating a small area of shade, assuming a roughly Earth-like size-and-distance arrangement. Solar magic is required to rotate the planet any faster than its one day per year rate, and lunar magic to revolve the moon any faster than its one month per year rate.
It seems most likely that once the alicorns (whoever they were and wherever they came from) decided to revive Equestria’s ability to sustain life (for whatever reasons), they would have first begun to accelerate the rotation of the planet, as this is absolutely necessary and the change requiring the most energy. But there’s a problem. The moon is locked on to the planet’s tidal bulge axis too strongly. As the alicorns accelerate the rotation of the planet, the moon tries to match angular velocity to maintain its position relative to the planet’s surface. But the star’s gravity pulls it back, threatening to tear the satellite apart. So the alicorns would then have to exert magical force to slow down the moon’s revolution as the planet continued to spin faster and faster. The moon’s orbit would still be accelerating (from one per year to the order of 101), just not as rapidly or as high as the acceleration of the planet’s rotation (from one per year to the order of 102).
With the planet now rotating hundreds of times per revolution and the moon now revolving tens of times in the same time period, key changes begin to happen. The hemisphere-spanning super glacier begins to melt, evaporate, and partially refreeze in a daily cycle, causing intense flooding and erosion. The desert cools and gigantic storm fronts race around the globe as the planet’s rotation and cycles of heating and cooling the atmosphere rapidly change temperature and pressure. The revolving moon now pushes and pulls the emerging liquid water in a tidal bulging sequence of its own, beginning to delineate land from sea.
Assuming the planet has the internal structure of one at all capable of sustaining familiar life, the now spinning core begins to assert a discernable geomagnetic field and trap energetic particles into its magnetosphere and plasmasphere. This provides an increasingly strong shield against dangerous particles and electromagnetic radiation from space, restoring some habitability to the planet.
After these and many other effects have emerged and stabilized, two last pieces of the puzzle remain, neither of which is assigned a patron alicorn in the show like Celestia and Luna. The first of these is planetary tilt. At full planetary tidal lock, there would be no rotational tilt, no angle separating the planes of planetary rotation and revolution. But tilt is required for seasonal procession, and Equestria definitely has seasons. The final element of a restored living planet is of course biological life. How the various life forms were created or restored must remain purely in the realm of head cannon, however. All we know is that on Equestria all of ponykind, and perhaps other sentient species are active participants in the march of time. Seasons, weather and the life cycles of other forms of life are enabled and guided by mortal hooves.
Well, there you have it. I hope you’ve enjoyed my paper and that whatever amount of time you just spent reading it was not wasted. I would (probably) enjoy your comments and questions.
Next: Devolution, Natural Selection and Immortality
Soon: Talent, Choice and Cute Marks of Destiny
Later: Twilight and the Divine Harmony
About the Author
The author is currently serving as a Senior Scientific and Technical Analyst at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center in Dayton, Ohio. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from Malone University in Canton, Ohio as well as Associate of Applied Sciences degrees in Intelligence Studies & Technology and in Scientific Applications Technology. He and his wife live in the Dayton area with their daughter, who loves the ponies, especially as toys gathered around a play tea set.
[1] http://mlpforums.com/topic/27530-how-celestia-and-luna-raise-the-sun-and-moon/
[2] For the rest of this paper, rather than invent a name for the planet, I will refer to both the realm ruled by Celestia as well as the actual planet which hosts that realm as “Equestria”. Which is meant should remain clear in context.
[3] No, really, it’s pretty rough: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidally_locked#Timescale

Hello!
So I have been working on an animation using blender and I am wondering how to make a pony's tail (or mane) have some drag when it moves, for example:
If the pony's head moves I want the mane/tail to lag behind it a little bit.
Essentially I want the mane/tail to act like real hair. Does anyone know how I can do this?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!

I've seen recently several threads appeared with different kinds of questions, more or less serious/strange/etc., but I guess all simply coming out of curiosity. I asked some myself, too. (Guilty.)
This has got me an idea:
I bet anyone of you has some nagging questions, which you carry in your head since long time, and no one ever could answer you to them. Right? E.g. why is there that white crayon in the crayon box? Or why is the sky blue at day, red at sunset, and black at night? Or why are we being forced to remove irrationality from the denominator of our fractions in math classes? Or where do we know the digits of the number pi from? Or why is the heat flowing from hotter to colder objects and not the other way around? Or what is time anyway? Or how can a high-jumper jump higher than his own height? Or why are some thick objects transparent, when some other, thinner object are not? And lots & lots of other questions, I guess...
But I also noticed that many of these questions I can answer (I'm a smart pony after all, if you didn't notice ). And I guess that many of you could know the answers for some other people's nagging questions, too. So why don't we just make a bargain?
I like solving problems, and I'm unstoppable in my drive for knowing the answers. This way I found (or discovered) answers to many of the nagging questions from my childhood and adult life. And many people come to me and start asking more questions as soon as they notice I can answer them.
That's why I'm curious of your nagging questions. What bothers you from your earliest childhood to this day? Do you have some questions which no teacher in your school could answer? Or something you always wanted to understood but no one could explain it to you in a comprehensible manner? (People tell me that I have a talent for simplifying things and explaining in a comprehensible manner, so you can count on me ). Please ask your questions here in this thread. And if you see a question of your peer you think you know the answer, feel free to help your friend I'll try to answer them too, if not here, then I'll try to write a whole article about that on my website if I find something interesting enough (There are some interesting articles already you can check out. E.g. about solving quadratic equations in your head, using simple geometry instead of the dreaded quadratic formula.)
What do you think of this idea?
And don't forget to post your nagging questions

When I was writing about me informations at my profile page I figured something quite fascinating
we posses A LOT of energy.
Here see for your self. I will list nuclear bombs yields.
Hiroshima bomb 0,000016 Gt of TNT
Tsar bomb 0,05 Gt of TNT
every nuclear bomb ever detonated 0,5103 Gt of TNT
all nuclear bombs mankind currently has 7 Gt of TNT
Now the energy that average human body posses 1,5036 Gt of TNT
This means that you posses over twice the amount of energy that every nuclear bomb ever detonated released and that if you get 4 friends you will together posses more energy than all nuclear weapons mankind has would release if detonated.
Of curse it's possible that I made error in my calculations and in that case I would be really grateful if someone would correct me.
edit:
I meant this partially like joke but when I was telling this to some person elsewhere I realized that I should explain my calculations. I compared the energy that nuclear bombs released (energy released trough fusion and fission) with energy that human body would release if annihilated. (I thought that it was obvious to anyone who was interested in reading this.) Do not think that the energy stored in chemical bonds in human body could ever get even close to any of these numbers. (I just found quite fascinating that if you annihilated average human body it would release more energy than every nuclear bomb released so I shared it.) I should also note that in annihilation roughly 50% of energy is released in neutrinos which almost don't interact with matter. If you wanted to calculate the "explosion" you would need to divide 1,5036 Gt of TNT by 2 (=0,7518 Gt of TNT)
edit2:
One of the comments inspired me to write how much antimatter would be needed to damage human body so here it is.
Since it is quite hard to tell how much energy is needed to cause noticeable damage lets compare it with known ways to cause noticeable damage.
In case of using the energy to accelerate projectile we can compare it with firearms.
Muzzle energy of 9mm pistol round is 519J this is equivalent to energy acquired by annihilating 5,7746pg of matter (0,0000000057746mg)
In case of using it in fragmentation explosive.
Hand grenade at least 400kJ this is equivalent to energy acquired by annihilating 4,4506ng of matter (0,0000044506mg).
Unfortunately I was unable to find any source on how would flesh react to gamma rays so I will just write energy required to vaporize roughly 0,0157l of water at starting temperature of 36°C. It requires approximately 40kJ (this is 1 tenth of "hand grenade energy") this is equivalent to energy acquired by annihilating 445,06pg of matter (0,00000044506mg)
Those were nice numbers weren't they but I have calculated this so people who aren't good at math (or don't like doing it) can get some idea. I don't know about you but I like to convert these numbers to objects I'm familiar with (or as close to it since these numbers are to small for objects we use everyday). I will also round the numbers more so it is easier to look at.
9mm pistol was 5,8pg
vaporization was 445pg
hand grenade was 4450pg
E. coli bacterium 1pg
Human sperm cell 22pg
average human cell 1 000pg
Very fine grain of sand (0.063 mm diameter) 350000pg
One eyebrow hair 70000000pg
Source for values starting from E. coli bacterium mass was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(mass) (accessed 31st May 2014)
or in another words energy acquired from one eyebrow hair would be equivalent to
12068966 9mm pistol bullets
157303 valorizations
15730 hand grenades
or you could use it to supply average person with electricity for 232 days.
note: this calculation didn't take into account that half of the energy from annihilation will be in form of neutrinos which won't interact with matter (The energy you will be able to use or that will do stuff will be half of what I wrote here) if you would want me to post the version which takes this into account rather than this one let me know.
I also want to ask what do you think about this topic? If I do something similar to this in future should I post it here? Do you think that post like this is out of place on this forum? Did anyone found this interesting?

In a scene from "Leap of Faith" (S04E20), Granny Smith, in her overconfidence, tries to break the Equestria high diving record by jumping from the highest diving board into a deep dish pie pan of water. Applejack, at the top of the high-diving platform, then throws a lasso around Granny Smith's hind legs and stops her just before she hits the ground by pulling Granny Smith back while holding the rope in her teeth. I think the physics of this scenario are a bit dubious, and I'll try to explain why below.
First, it's extraordinarily fortunate that there's a rope at the top of the diving platform for Applejack to use, and furthermore, that it's just long enough to be able to reach Granny Smith, yet just short enough that it can be pulled taut to stop Granny Smith before she hits the ground. On top of this, in the period of time between Granny Smith jumping off the diving board and just before she hits the ground (a little under 6 seconds, by my observation), Applejack is somehow able to gasp in horror, grab the rope, tie it into a lasso, and throw it both quickly and accurately enough to catch up to Granny Smith far below (while overcoming air resistance) and wrap around her hind legs before she hits the ground. Finally, as @@Wingnut pointed out in the discussion topic for the episode, the rope acts strangely elastic for looking like an ordinary rope, stretching out the time over which Granny Smith is stopped and reducing the average force exerted to stop her.
One aspect of this whole scenario that amazes me is that Applejack supposedly exerts the force necessary to stop Granny Smith's free fall by pulling back on the rope held between her teeth. So, below, I'll try to make a quick-and-dirty calculation of the average force required to stop Granny Smith's free fall before she hits the ground. If you don't want to read the details, feel free to skip to the FINAL RESULT AND IMPLICATIONS below.
CALCULATIONS:
In order to calculate the average force needed to stop Granny Smith's free fall, I'll first calculate the impulse, or change in momentum, which Granny Smith undergoes, then divide this by the time period over which she experiences this impulse.
To calculate the impulse, we need Granny Smith's mass and velocity just before Applejack stops her. I don't know any good source for the weights of ponies in the world of Equestria, so I'll use a rough guess of 100 lb for Granny Smith's weight. To calculate Granny Smith's velocity just before Applejack stops her, I'll use this online calculator that finds free fall distance and velocity with air resistance. I'll use a mass of 45.36 kg (= 100 lb), and I observed a free fall time of 5.75 seconds between the apex of Granny Smith's leap off the diving board and the time at which the lasso around Granny Smith's hind legs first becomes taut. I'll use the calculator's given air resistance coefficient and gravitational acceleration, which I assume are the same in Equestria as they are on Earth.
mass = m = 100 lb = 45.36 kg
free fall time = 5.75 s
free fall velocity (from online calculator) = vi = 37.21 m/s (= 83 mph!)
free fall distance (from online calculator) = 129.83 m (= 426 ft, or about 35 stories!)
Note the calculations above of just how fast Granny Smith was free falling, and just how far the high-diving board was off the ground. Those numbers in themselves are astounding. Would Granny Smith really be unharmed after being suddenly stopped from that speed? Why would the ponies build a high-diving platform that tall (and not even have it facing over the pool)?
So, with the above numbers, the impulse, or change in momentum, of Granny Smith from her free fall velocity to zero is:
J = mvi - mvf = (45.36 kg)(37.21 m/s) - 0 = 1687.85 N·s
Now we need to know the time period over which Granny Smith experienced this change in momentum. To get this, I counted the frames between the frame when the rope around Granny Smith's legs first becomes taut and the frame when Granny Smith first "springs back" from the bottom of her fall, which I counted as 10 frames. Since the video is 24 frames/second, this means that Granny Smith was stopped in a time period of 5/12 of a second:
t = (10 frames)/(24 frames/second) = 5/12 s
Thus, the average force needed to stop Granny Smith's free fall is the impulse divided by the time period over which the impulse takes place:
F = J/t = (1687.85 N·s)/(5/12 s) = 4050.84 N
To get a sense of how big this force is, let's re-arrange F = ma and, again using Earth's gravitational acceleration, find the equivalent mass for this force:
m = F/a = (4050.84 N)/(9.81 m/s2) = 412.93 kg = 910.35 lb
FINAL RESULT AND IMPLICATIONS:
The average force needed for Applejack to stop Granny Smith's free fall is roughly equivalent to the force needed for Applejack to suspend a 900 lb weight off the ground, and by holding a rope tied to the weight in between her teeth, no less! For comparison, even the largest Atlas stones used in the World's Strongest Man competition are about 350 lbs. The necessary force is probably even greater than I calculated once other factors are taken into account, such as the angle at which Applejack is pulling the rope and the coefficient of static friction between the rope and her teeth, which could be substantially reduced by, for example, saliva in her mouth. Thus, it seems a little unlikely that Applejack's jaw muscles are powerful enough to exert the necessary force to stop Granny Smith.
In fact, I can think of several failure points in this whole scenario of Applejack trying to stop Granny Smith, even assuming that she successfully lassos Granny Smith's hind legs:
1. The rope, once pulled taut, simply slips out from between Applejack's teeth;
2. Applejack dislocates her jaw trying to hold on to the rope;
3. Applejack holds on to the rope, but is pulled right off the diving board;
4. The lasso around Granny Smith's legs slips off under the sudden force on it.
In short, after analysis, the scenario in "Leap of Faith" where Applejack lassos Granny Smith from atop the high-diving platform and stops her by pulling the rope held between her teeth seems extremely unlikely to be able to happen as depicted.
What do you think? Do you agree with this analysis? Thanks for reading!

Here, you can suggest to me what you want me to theorize about the science of magic. I recommend you read this before you post an idea.
The Ponyverse has a lot of unexplained magic, most of which is at the moment undiscovered even by the unicorns. My goal is to create a collection of files that find out the properties of the ponyverse, and even beyond.
Post any idea below, and if you wish, here is a suggestive guideline to copy and paste for presenting the idea:
Identification - [name here]
Observation - [summary here]
Goal - [goal here]
Identification is basically the name of the magic.
Observation is what the magic does. Be general, or you may be specific. Try and give examples and what you notice about the magic.
Goal is basically what I will try and explain about the magic. (the word "theorize" comes to mind....) It's best to keep it in a question form.
You don't need to follow the guideline, but it is appreciated and may be more convenient for all of us. Here is an example:
Identification - Tangible clouds
Observation - A pegasus can touch clouds as if they where a solid. Although, it seems that it can dissipate into a gaseous form as well... To add, earth and unicorn ponies experience the tangibility of clouds to be not as solid as a pegasus would experience.
Goal - Why can clouds be tangible in certain cases?
I hope to see everyone's ideas, and will not disregard anyone's suggestion even how ridiculous it may be. One way or another, I will find a way to explain any magic a person may reference to.

Suggested by: Night Shine
Identification - Nature of Celestial Bodies
Observation - Celestia and Luna say that they "raise and lower the sun, moon, and stars".
Goal - Are the cosmic properties of the Equestrian universe far different from those of Earth, or are the ponies simply speaking metaphorically?
Intro
I suspect that Celestia and Luna don't metaphorically raise the sun, moon, and stars; but rather do in fact raise the celestial bodies using some form of magic. But how can this be? We know that in our universe it's the earth that spins, not the stars and sun. Although, I have some evidence that may prove their universe to function a whole lot differently than ours...
Theory so far
My hypothesis at the beginning of my research suggested that it was the planet that was being controlled, not the sun and stars. Although, it turns out it is just the opposite from my evidence (see evidence #1 in spoiler below).
The sun and moon actually circle the planet. Strange, because in our universe we know that the sun has tremendously more mass than the earth, and therefore makes the earth orbit the sun.
Stranger enough, there is more evidence showing that the moon is literally an opposite of the sun (see evidence #2 in spoiler below).
What about planets and moons outside individual solar systems? how does that work? Well, I think that every single body of mass has a "magical" property to it. Call it it's own energy if you will, but the energy transfers are much different than here. I think the best way to explain it is to see more clues I've found (see evidence #3 in spoiler below).
End of File
WOW, my first real file.
Anyway, I'd like to thank Night Shine for bringing up this idea. This really was quite a large topic to discuss though (not that it's bad, it's actually wonderful!), and I don't even know if I clarified enough evidence yet... If anyone would wish to add more evidence, or a speculation I may have missed related to this topic, feel free to post a comment.
If you want to submit your own question to be solved by me and be documented into a science file, go to the link below:
http://mlpforums.com/blog/1359/entry-8407-science-files-entries/
Thanks for giving your time into reading this, and I hope you enjoy your day!

So, recently I was bumming around here, and there was just a quick query which somepony posted. They were asking simply “How long is 100 Moons?”
At first, I thought it would be very simple to answer. In any media which I’ve read where animals are the main characters, “moon” has always been the standard measurement of time. In Watership Down, Warriors, The Sight, and MLP, “moon” has been the unit of time, because non-humans would obviously stick to things more easily observable than the orbital period of the Earth around the sun. Standardly, a “moon,” or Lunar Month, is the length of time form one New Moon to the next. It is usually around 28-29 days, but it varies.
So, I did the multiplication, and calculated 100 moons as roughly 2,900 Civil Days, or 8 Solar Years. But then it occurred to me. I was using values from our Universe, from our solar system, and our Earth. Not every moon or planet orbits at the same rate. And in fact, Equestria’s sun and moon don’t even orbit in the traditional sense. They do not move of their own accord- the Celestial Sisters move them.
And that leaves an interesting idea to be considered. How is time measured in Equestria? How does astronomy even work there? With a geocentric model of the solar system where things don’t move on their own, everything we know about planetary dynamics ceases to apply. And this leaves us viewers at a loss. We are now dealing with a system that functions completely differently from anything we know. So, we need to try and use only in-show evidence to make a determination as to how Equestria functions as a natural system.
We do have some safe assumptions we can make. The Equestrian solar system is geocentric, with the sun and moon going around the planet (shall we call it Equus?). Equus’ axis of rotation must be slanted with respect to the orbit of the sun and the moon, because otherwise there would not be a polar ice cap. Days do vary in length as the year progresses, since there is a longest day of the year (The Summer Sun Celebration). There is some level of a natural progression of the seasons, since leaves turn colour on their own, implying that winter would come, ponies or no. The ponies simply make the transition between seasons move quicker. So in most every respect, Equus seems very much like Earth.
For our purposes, the assumptions above will be what we work with. As a system, we cannot apply logic to Equus, or the question here, if we bring up the notion of the Celestial Sisters raising the sun and moon. For our purposes, we need to assume here that the sisters move not the bodies themselves, but the planet Equus, because it just doesn’t work if we have them pushing the bodies in an orbit around Equus. There’s a reason the Geocentric model failed.
If the we accepted that the sun were pushed around Equus, and not Equus around the sun, a year would be the same length as a day, and seasons wouldn’t exist. We will pretend that somehow Equus is in a geocentric system, and somehow it acts as if it is in heliocentric system, because this is what we see based on the observations we made above.
That being said, let’s move on to the bigger issue here. Time. How does it work in Equestria? We know that the ponies measure time in moons. How long is a moon? Well, we can’t tell based strictly on information in Equestria, since, as we see above, our logic does not apply to it. So, let us turn to the human world. Yes… we are consulting Equestria Girls. *yay*
In EQG, the mirror opens every 30 moons, Equestria time. 30 moons in Equestria is equal to roughly 3 years in the human world. We know this because Sunset Shimmer has spent 3 years in high school, and a high school uses the solar calendar. The human world, we can assume, functions exactly as our world does. There is no magical, physics-defying nonsense. So we know that 3 years in EQG (or our world)= 30 moons in Equestria.
Now we can do simple math to find out the length of an Equestrian Moon in our time. Get Derpy if you’re nervous.
30 moons in equestria = 3 earth years. Divide the whole thing by 3 to find out how many Equestrian Moons are in 1 Earth Year, and the answer is 10:1. Every 10 moons in Equestria is 1 Earth year (EY). Now, let’s do another step to find out how many earth days are in 1 Equestria Moon (EM).
One Earth Year is 365.24 Earth Days (ED). So, 365.24 ED= 10 EM. If we divide the whole thing by 10, we get 1 Equestrian Moon is equal to 36.524 Earth Days.
So, now we have something to work with! Using this information, we can get a scale of how time flows in Equestria. The moon orbits Equus at a slightly slower rate than our moon orbits us (remember, Equus acts like it is in a heliocentric model, even if it isn’t.) So, to answer the person’s question on the forums. 100 Equestrian Moons is equal to 3652.4 Earth Days, so 10 years.
What do you guys think? Did my math bore you? Or do you find this interesting knowledge which helped you learn about Equestria? Did you note any flaws in my calculations? Let me know what you guys think!

Laws of physics file intro:
Obviously, the laws of physics in My Little Pony is different than in our universe. What are these laws of physics? How much different are they from ours? I'm not going to get too mathematical, this is more of an attempt to logically understand how everything in their universe works... one file at a time.
What is magic?
Magic, simply put, is misunderstood science. Ponies, like humans in the dark ages, saw something mysterious as magic. In the ponyverse, magic is extreme! Unicorns; tangible clouds; heck, the sun and moon are controlled by the magic of unicorns. Although, in Equestria Girls (I'll create another topic dedicated to it), when Twilight goes into our universe she realizes that friendship is a magic in all universes. This changes our perspective on what magic really is then. If there is a law of physics that never changes and is considered magic, perhaps magic itself is a property of reality...
Friendship is Magic, that's what the show is about. It's the title for goodness sake! If we know that friendship exists in all universe, and is its own form of magic, then we can speculate that friendship in general allows every universe to access the magic of individual physics. Magic is science, but friendship, what is that? Some type of keyhole to use magic if you ask me.
Anyway, so far we know that magic is different for individual universes. If you conclude that magic is the missing knowledge of the laws of physics, you can see that every universe has different magic. In our universe, you can conclude also that we have our own magic. We are going through breakthroughs in science though, and magic is undetermined to be a part of our physical world. Although, we have gaps in our laws of physics, and may consider that magic is inside those gaps. Although, friendship is magic, and that applies to all universes. The goal of these files is to find out why physics, magic, and friendship all connect together and how they connect together throughout the multiverse.
Conclusion
This was only the beginning of the files, more are to come. If anyone has a magic they wish for me to unveal, post your idea in the link below.
http://mlpforums.com/blog/1359/entry-8407-science-files-entries/

So I had to wake up early this Saturday for a Scholarbowl Competition. As usual, I turned on my playlist of music that helps me fall asleep (I don't really know why, most of them aren't really "relaxing").
I dont remember dreaming that much, but I do have one dream scene that was very vivid and... real. It's not the detail that got me, but just the circumstances. Waking up from the dream, I felt real emotions.
First off, while there are teachings of psychology that associate dreams with hidden subconscious/sexual desires, neural science says they are generally a "simulation" your brain does to prepare you for situations without putting you in danger.
Well, enough of that. Time for dat dream.
So, I should point out that this scene took place at my school.... sorta... I mean, for the most part, it looked like my school.... with a strange difference... windows. Windows, windows everywhere!
Seriously, there were a couple of windows, bringing in light. Now, it's winter in IL right now, and a cold one at that (and warm, depending on the weather's bipolar mood). However, these windows were bringing in a nice summer light, with ferns clearly growing outside.
Why am I so fixated on these windows (which, while they were very nice, didn't look out of place)? Meh, My school doesn't really have any windows. The classrooms who have them close them up (for the ones I see, at least) or just have small slits in the wall (like a prison?). Basically, the windows were pretty.
So I was walking down the hallway with someone. We were walking down the Blue Mile (the name of the hallway in my school, since it's in a weird position to not have a number as a name) which is how I get to Physics class. The hallway had the golden light from the sun pouring in, with a slight green tinge (from the ferns, I guess).
Now, the person I was walking with is the girl who sits next to me in Physics (in real life). I won't lie, she's really pretty, with really blond hair and a beautiful smile. Sometimes, I like to talk with her, which is nice. She's really friendly and seems to like me as a friend, to which I have no complaints to. That said, I'm slightly paranoid when it comes to girls like this (i'm sorry to any females who read this). I feel like she's just using me for Physics help, thus the curse of being the smart guy. Many girls I've met before pretend to be nice to me when they needed help with school/homework. Or she's just playing me to see if she can mess with me. Anyway, that's just my paranoia talking. I'm sure (or hope, at least) she doesn't have an ulterior motive and is just being a pleasant person.
Back to the dream. We walk into the physics classroom, which is a lot bigger in the dream than it is in real life. The large "sciencey" desk is still in the front of the room, but now there is a bit of a platform behind it where the blackboard is (yes, our school still has those); something like Frasier Crane's apartment. There was also had bunch of windows and a door left which lead to a fern garden.
So this girl and I are talking next to the teacher's desk (which is quite big) and we haven't put our stuff down by our desks yet. Our position next to the corner of the teacher's desk is rather strange, since we're blocking the way for other students to get to their desks. They sorta scoot around us awkwardly to get to their desks. However, I had something really important to ask her, and I guess it couldn't wait.
I'm not sure how I worded it, but I asked something along the lines of, "Do you want to be friends with me?"
Her reply was something like, "I'm sorry, but I can't be friends with you, you being a nerdfighter and all..."
Now, Nerdfighteria is a community that grew up around the vlogbrothers' vidoes. While it's not a connotation I normally define with, I do like the vlogbrothers
She then went to say something like. "..and there's that other thing..." and pointed to something behind me. I turn around to see my friend Josh handing me a small button (like a small campaign button). Now, I'm not sure why Josh ended up in this dream, since I only see him at lunch and our conversations aren't all that lively, but that button is interesting.
Josh held the button upside down. I could only see the silver back, but I knew exactly what it was. It was the button with "Future Twilight" (the one that looked like snake?) on it that I bought from Hot Topic. After just leaving it in a drawer for a long while, I finally garnered the courage to put it on my backpack about a week ago. In the dream, Josh was handing it to me as if I dropped it. Essentially, she was referring to my Bronyness.
I can't really remember the rest of the dream, but it involved a lot of idle conversation with people around my desk or something... I dunno.
TL;DR. Anyway, I woke up from this dream at around 5:45 am (15 minutes before my alarm was to go off) and felt really sad. Not cry your eyes out sad, but sad as in that I wasn't accepted as a friend. It was sorta a gloomy feeling I had, lying in my bed, waiting for the alarm to go off.
Now, I guess the question is if my brain's trying to tell me something about this girl that I should know; or it's getting me ready for the day she dumps me as a friend.
Or maybe it was what it was: Just a dream.

So, me and another friend (who is also a brony) made a video for a physics project. We were suppose to make a film, then make a position vs time graph to go along with the film. We got a 100 on it, so I decided to share it with you guys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_qYH9xxswo

Okay, so awhile back I saw the "Cartoon Fails" video about My Little Pony, where a G1 pony is shot. I had the question: Could Twilight Sparkle stop the bullets?
First, I had to form a basis for how the Telekinesis works.
I came up with a big long thing about free will and such (in the spoiler), but boils down to this: They convert thermal potential energy into kinetic energy.
This means they have a specific amount of power. As we've seen, the motion isn't instantaneous, in other words, they "push" on things with telekinesis, exerting a force. So it looks like they convert the energy at a rate, (a certain amount of kinetic energy every second) and energy at a rate, is power.
So, I set off on a quest to find out how much "power" Twilight Sparkle has.
Let's get down to business,
To have the funs!
Okay, for starters, we'll take the event where she used the most power in the series so far - and judging by effort and mass, it looks like "Boast Busters" when she defeated the Ursa Minor.
Watch it here! (With some awesome classical music)
http-~~-//www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlm9guAoyKI
Power can be found as a change in energy over time. Since we're using Kinetic Energy, this involves a distance, so we need to know how big everything is.
A long time ago, I found an image on the web where someone referenced a scene from "Hearth's Warming Eve", where Twilight looks at a Candy cane and says: "I spy... An eight foot candy cane!", and from there, he found the size of the ponies. I decided to do it myself, and I'm more satisfied with the process and answers I got:
Okay, the number we're going to use here is the height of Rarity's head, 17.5 inches, which is 14.45 cm.
This is key to finding out how powerful Twilight is. Once we know how massive the water tower is, and how fast she accelerates it, we can find out how powerful Twilight is.
- Warning: This next section is very math-heavy! You may skip down to the "End of Water Tower Size and Mass" if you want to cut to the chase
Now, let's find the size of the Water Tower. Where can we do this? "Secret of my Excess"!
Note: I could have used a lot of complex calculus and find the volume of the curved lid, but that would be waaaaay too difficult. This isn't all very precise, so I simply made a more simple, non-calculus geometric cone to simulate the lid, and the body as a cylinder.
So I've drawn some measurements. Remember a pony's head is 44.45 cm. So:
22 px = 44.45 cm
Now, convert. We'll see how many "heads" long these lines are, then multiply the number of "head-lengths" by how many cm there are in each head to get the length of the line in cm.
(280 px / 22) * 44.45 = 566 cm
WATER HEIGHT = 5.66 m
(323 px / 22) * 44.45 = 643 cm
= 6.53 m
But we need the radius for the math, not the diameter, so the radius is:
RADIUS = 3.265 m
(350 px / 22) * 44.45 = 707 cm
CYLINDER HEIGHT = 7.07 m
(230 px / 22) * 44.45 = 465 cm
CONE HEIGHT = 4.65 m
Volume of cylinder
= Pi*(3.265)^2 * 7.07
= 236.775 m^3
Volume of Cone
= (1/3)*Pi*(3.265)^2 * 4.65
= 51.910 m^3
OUTER VOLUME TOTAL:
288.685 m^3
Now, we need to divide the volume into two volumes: an outer shell, and the inner empty volume. That way, we'll have the exact volume that's filled with steel walls, and the volume filled with water.
Skip ahead a little to the illustration below if you don't understand. We need to find the grey volume, and knowing the density of steel, we kind find out how much all that steel weighs.
As a rough guess, I assumed the walls are three-quarters inch thick.
.75 inch = ~1.9 cm
A line going from the middle of the tower at the base, to the outer edge, would go through the wall, so remove 1.9 cm, or 0.019 m
3.265 - 0.019 = 3.246 m
INNER RADIUS = 3.246 m
Instead of making the cone 1.9 cm shorter and the cylinder 1.9 cm shorter, I'll have to add those two lengths together, then evenly divide the number proportionally to both of the lengths.
It sounds quiet complicated, but to understand why; look at the illustration:
If I do it any other way, it changes the slope of the cone's walls, and makes the top cap the wrong shape.
So here goes:
1.9 + 1.9 = 3.8
Entire height (of outer volume) = 11.72 m
Cylinder height fraction = 7.07 / 11.72
Cone height fraction = 4.65 / 11.72
So to split the 3.8 cm length proportionally,
the cone gets:
(4.65 / 11.72)*3.8 = 1.5 cm = .015 m
And the cylinder gets
(7.07 / 11.72)*3.8 = 2.3 cm = .023 m
In addition, I believe for a strong base the base will be slightly thicker, so I'll make it a full inch, so that's slicing another quarter inch from the interior volume cylinder's height.
2.54*0.25 = 0.0635
0.0635 + 2.3 = 2.3635 cm = .023635 m
So our inner cylinder height is:
7.07 - 0.023635
= INNER CYLINDER HEIGHT = 7.046365 m
And our cone height is:
4.65 - 0.015
= INNER CONE HEIGHT = 4.635 m
So, our inner volume is:
Volume of Inner Cylinder
= Pi * 3.246^2 * 7.046365
= 233.245 m^3
Volume of Inner Cone
= (1/3) * Pi * 3.246^2 * 4.635
= 51.142 m^3
INNER VOLUME TOTAL:
284.387 m^3
Steel Volume
= 288.685 - 284.387
= 4.298 m^3
Water Volume
= Pi * 3.246^2 * 5.66
= 187.354 m^3
The density of steel is roughly 7.8 g/cm^3 [source]
= 7.8 g/cm^3 = 7,800 kg/m^3
Steel Mass:
= 4.298 m^3 * 7,800 kg/m^3 = 33,524.4 kg.
Water Mass:
= 187.354 m^3 * 1,000 kg/m^3 = 187,354 kg.
Total mass = 220,878.4 kg.
so now we have the total mass of the water tower.
- End of Water Tower Size and Mass
Now, how fast does she accelerate it?
Luckily, we know time and distance now
Because we know the width of the tower, we can find out how far it's been lifted, over one second.
679 px = 6.53 m
(193/679) * 6.53 = 1.856 m
Acceleration = 1.856 m/s^2
Mass = 220,878.4 kg
EDIT:
Well, here's the fix. I forgot gravity. I kept the original post in the spoiler below to avoid confusion, because other ponies in the thread trusted me, and used my figures, but they were wrong...
I need to add an acceleration of 9.82 m/s^2 to that other acceleration, because Twilight didn't just lift this thing in weightlessness, stupid me, she lifted it against gravity, and to do that she'd have to give it 9.82 m/s of speed every second, so I just add the two accelerations together.
Acceleration = 1.856 + 9.807 (standard gravity, not even 9.82, as I just found out)
= 11.663 m/s^2
So that gives her energy per second, which is power, as:
KE = 0.5 * 220,878.4 * 11.663^2
= 15,022,555 Watts
or 15.022555 MW!!!
That's the reliable figure, too.
All along I was thinking to myself, that 380 kW seemed WAAAAY too small for lifting that 220 ton water tower!
I was right. I was wrong.
But, just so my post doesn't lose content, I'll copy and update the original post from here:
/EDIT
Take it as canon:
Twilight Sparkle, has AT LEAST ~15 MW of telekinetic power!!!
Take it as canon, because it's based directly off of the show! I showed you my work!
She also lifted an Ursa, but getting all this information on that is much more difficult, and much less precise.
But, as an absolute minimum, back, early on in Season 1 (Since Twilight's always getting better), she had AT LEAST ~15 MW of telekinetic power.
Anything else is a rough estimate. The Ursa may be starry, but it was able to crush buildings with it's weight, and when Trixie tied it's paws, it seemed very physical, so if we go off a rough guess:
And we assume it's like a normal organic being, roughly as dense as water, which is roughly as dense as the water tower, then we can get a fair guesstimation of it's weight.
The water tower weighs ~220 tons.
So how many "Water Towers" is the Ursa?
I'd say roughly 8-12. There are seven boxes, but that's only counting height and width. The image is 2-d, but the Ursa is 3-d (even though it's 2d animated ), and the Ursa has more depth than the water tower, so there's eve more mass than those 7.
So, using that number, Twilight Sparkle has:
Anywhere from
120 to 180 MEGAWATTS of power.
By Comparison, a United States Navy Nimitz-class Supercarrier has two nuclear powerplants, which put out just a tiny bit less than 200 Megawatts of Electrical power.
And for further comparison Yoda, according to xkcd, only has a relatively puny 18.3 Kilowatts! Source: http://what-if.xkcd.com/3/
I'd say, based off of this, our little pony could defeat Yoda, Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Maul, and the old Sith guy, all at once, without much effort.
If they each somehow manage 20 Kilowatts, that's still a meager 140 Kilowatts, compared to Twilight Sparkle's bare minimum of 5,000!
So, what about that question I asked at the start? Could Twilight stop a bullet?
Well, assuming it's a shotgun round, like in the video, and ignoring aerodynamics, assuming an average shotgun muzzle velocity ~ 1500 feet per second.
A standard double-ought shotgun buckshot round, twelve-gauge, has about 3,500 joules of energy in total. As such, if Twilight could put her full BARE MINIMUM of 5,000,000 Watts of power on it the moment it leaves the muzzle, then she could bring every pellet to a full stop in 0.0007 second!
During that amount of time, the pellets would manage to travel 6.3 inches.
And one interesting note - is while she could bring the pellets to a full stop in a milisecond, it also means she could propel them back at the same speed they came in, in two miliseconds! Truly a force to be reckoned with!
Though, truth be told, it takes her a certain amount of time to focus and work the spells. In "Feeling Pinkie Keen", she jumped, and wasn't able to teleport before hitting the ground. The run in "Dragon Quest" pretty firmly confirmed why we haven't seen her unleash this full potential in every instance.
But, nonetheless, that power is there. She is indeed a force to be reckoned with!
Image credit: http://jrk08004.devi...erful-272400249

I don't know too much about particle physics, so just roll with me on this one...
What if magic was an additional fundamental interaction, along with gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear interactions?
My theory would be that it would mediated by a "mason" (magic boson, and it needs a better name because it sounds like "meson"), and that that particle is very short-lived. It can add magic energy to things, which would then quickly convert into other forms of energy (light, kinetic, etc.) This would help to explain unicorn magic, and Sonic Rainbooms, in that when pegasi go incredibly fast some of their kinetic energy is transferred to magic energy, which excites surrounding electrons, emitting light...
Just an idea, mind you, and not a very good one at that